I am coming up to my 18th year in the House. During that time, we have had serious votes on going to war in Iraq and in Syria, and on different occasions, parliamentary sovereignty has asserted itself. On the war in Iraq, we thought we had the information, but it turned out that we did not, and we went to war. On Syria, despite some strong arguments to intervene, we chose not to. I also remember sitting through the night for the 90-day detention legislation under Tony Blair,
and this House resisted the move to a 90-day detention period for those arrested for terrorism offences. Tonight, we are again being asked to make a very important decision that will affect the future of this country.
I might say that the sovereignty of this Parliament is why we are here in the first place, so I applaud the Government Members who are standing by their principles and remembering the importance of coming back to debate in this House. This is about timing. We may have had a discussion about what is meaningful, but I think we all know what is meaningless. It is meaningless to have a debate and a vote in this House after the decision is made. For all those reasons, I hope that we will return after the vote on amendment 7 and find that we really have given back sovereignty to the UK Parliament.